


You Don't Have To Suffer On Your Own Anymore

by Softlight



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Betrayal, Depression, Grief, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Laurent is a drunk sap, M/M, Referenced Childhood Sexual Abuse, Referenced Death, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 05:43:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7878733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Softlight/pseuds/Softlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laurent is drunk, and begs for Damen to tell him a secret.  Damen agrees, if Laurent will tell him one later in return.  </p>
<p>Just because secrets are dark, it doesn't mean that they shouldn't be shared.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Don't Have To Suffer On Your Own Anymore

**Author's Note:**

> If you're in a sensitive place right now, I wouldn't recommend reading this, just in case. There's a lot of dark stuff here, but only you know what you can handle. Just a heads-up. Please enjoy.

“Tell me a secret,” he slurred, the sweet wine coating his lips.  Damen smiled, carefully slipping the bottle out of his hands and refilling his own glass.

“I think that’s enough honey-wine for you,” he chided gently.

“Tell me a secret!” he insisted, rolling his head around his neck.  Damen rolled his eyes, an easy smile across his face.

“You know all of my secrets,” Damen insisted, stretching backwards.  Laurent shook his finger, smiling eagerly.

“I do not!   _ Everyone _ has secrets, no matter how small,” he stressed, cocking his head to the right.  “Tell me a secret!”

Damen’s eyes were vivid gold in the soft candlelight, and Laurent couldn’t tear his eyes from them, no matter how he tried.  Even in his intoxicated state, well,  _ especially _ in his intoxicated state, he became that much more beautiful and unearthly to Laurent.  His husband was handsome with a point, his corner sharp and polished.  He was beautiful, simply put.

It would’ve been very aggravating, had Damen not been all his.

“If you tell me a secret when you’re sober,” Damen countered, toasting his own full glass of honey-wine.  Stupid beefcake had drunk at least three more glasses of the wine than Laurent had, and  _ he _ was still functioning just fine!  

“Fine, fine,” Laurent agreed with a wave of his hand.  “Just  _ tell me _ !” he whined, rocking back and forth on his hands.  Damen smiled, his eyes going quiet in the light.

“Do you remember Jokaste?” he asked softly, and some part of him started shrieking, that he had to sober up, or he’d miss something, but his mind was still lost to sweet fog.

“You mean the ice cold, iron cast, female and slightly-less-bitchier version of me?”  Laurent nodded, trying to ignore the spinning in his head.  Damen’s lip quirked upwards, but the light didn’t come back into his eyes.

“Yeah, that’s the one.”  Damen took a small sip of his own wine.  Laurent felt the atmosphere darken, and he tried to will himself to seriousness, but there was no way to do that without interrupting Damen-  “I thought I had loved her.”

Well, that was one way to sober him up.

“You did?” he asked quietly, staring straight into Damen’s chest.

“I thought I had,” Damen corrected, diverting his eyes.  “I thought that I’d, at the very least, maybe end up marrying her.  One day, you know?  And I had loved her more than I had loved anyone up to the point, and it felt- it felt  _ good _ , right, if that makes sense.”  His stomach started churning.

“Yeah, it makes sense,” he agreed, the gold cuff on his wrist suddenly feeling heavier than normal.

“And then my father died, and Kastor betrayed us, and that was bad enough, but then I found out the hand she had dealt in all of it.”  Damen swallowed, his throat pulsing.  “I didn’t, well, don’t think about it a lot.  But it hurts.  There’s so much other pain to think about, that I could chose from if I wanted to relish in it, but I don’t.  And I just get stuck sometimes on how she had a hand in it all.”

“Oh.”  He suddenly felt very dirty for being jealous.  

“And then there’s the matter of Kastor.”

Laurent looked into his lap, unsure how to proceed.  “Kastor?”

Damen sighed, rubbing his face.  “He was my brother.  And I don’t want to accept it all, even now.  He’s tried to kill me so many times, killed our father, and I still don’t believe that he would do it all.  I saw it with my own eyes, almost died by his blade, but I can’t accept it.  I have to, because he’s gone, and while I don’t miss him, I can’t accept what he did.  I don’t want to, you know?”

Laurent blanched.  “Not really, if I’m being honest.”

Damen let out a small laugh.  “That’s okay, Laurent.  So in short, I can’t accept the fact that my brother was who he was, and I don’t love Jokaste, but I still worry about her.  I worry about those around her, and I can’t help but feel almost responsible for whatever she does next.  It’s not my responsibility, but I worry.  I worry a lot.”  Damen’s eyes flickered up to Laurent, his gaze soft.

“You should leave the worrying to me,” he ordered, hitting his own chest with the palm of his hand.  “You don’t deserve to be forced to worry all the time.  I love you too much for you to be constantly worrying.”  His mouth was so pretty, even with a tight smile on his face.

“I like worrying about you, even when I don’t,” he replied lightly.  “And I’m worried that I’ve let you have too much wine and have kept you up much too late.”  Laurent shook his head, the world spinning around.

“But we have to talk about this!” he insisted, tipping alarming towards his left.  “You just told me a  _ big _ secret!   _ Two _ big secrets!”  Damen’s face flashed with worry, and Laurent immediately began shushing him, pressing a finger to his lips.  “I said,  _ no more worrying _ !”

“If you go to bed, I won’t worry any more,” Damen countered, gently lifting Laurent off his feet and escorting him to the bed.  He handed him a glass of water, which he greedily chugged, before being carefully relieved of his tight clothing and ushered into bed.

“But- but we gotta talk tomorrow,” he murmured, head hitting the pillow.  Damen’s hand found itself in his hair, gently rubbing his scalp.  “Feels good,” he sighed, snuggling closer to his heater of a husband.

Damen pressed a quick kiss on Laurent’s cheek before blowing out the candles.  “We’ll talk to tomorrow, Laurent.  If you’re not dying from that hangover.”

“What hangover?” he slurred, eyes slowly closing as sleep overtook him.

* * *

 

“So  _ this _ hangover,” he groaned, eyes slowly opening as sunlight poured in through the window.  “Why was I allowed to drink that much honey-wine again?”

“Because you said that you could handle it, and started swatting me every time I tried to take it from you,” Damen supplied, opening all the curtains in their bedroom.  Laurent groaned, flopping onto his stomach with the pillow over his ears.  

“Talk quieter!” he yelled, shoving his face into the bed.  Damen pulled the blanket off his head, gently prodding Laurent so that he would flop onto his back.

“I’m had breakfast brought up, so please, try and eat something when it comes,” he said, far quieter than before.  Laurent nodded, groaning.  

“I want to die,” he moaned, laying his head in Damen’s lap.  “This is horrible.  Never let me drink more than two glasses on honey-wine again.”  Damen stroked his hair, chuckling.

“Marked,  _ lover _ ,” he teased, a gentle smile spread across his face.  “How many glasses did you drink last night?”

“Seven, I think.  I refilled my glass a couple times, so roughly that,” he squinted, brow furrowing in concentration.

Damen laughed loudly, forcing Laurent to wince.  “Sorry, sorry,” Damen said, twirling Laurent’s hair around his fingers.  “Just how much  _ do _ you remember from last night, anyways?”  Laurent forced his heart beat to remain slow, steadying his breath.  “Laurent?”

“Not much after you taking the bottle of wine out of my hands,” he lied, trying to ignore the blistering black spots in his brain.  “Did Nikandros come in with an earring in his ear?”  Damen chuckled, taking care to be quiet.  Laurent smirked slightly.  “I didn’t think so, but one can dream.”

“I think if you tell him about that dream, he would castrate you,” Damen admitted, forcing a small laugh out of Laurent.

“I’d like to see him try.  You have too much of an interest in my balls to let him go through with it, so it’d be two on one.  Plus, there’s the whole fact that we’re Kings, so, I’d  _ really _ like to see him try,” he smirked, staring up at Damen’s face.  

Damen snorted, gently pushing Laurent off of him.  “I’m going to go help the poor servant who is bringing up our breakfasts.  You’ll scare him if I let him in the room, and Alar is too kind to scare.”  Laurent grimaced, sticking out his tongue.

“You ruining all my fun,” he groaned, flopping down onto the bed.  “But if you must spare them, go help him.  I’d say I would help too, except for the fact that I’m going to actually throw up if I move.”  Damen nodded, ducking out the door with a smile in his direction.

Laurent laid on the bed, eyes shut tight, as he processed everything he remembered from last night.

He owed Damen a secret, even if Damen didn’t know that he remembered everything.  He simply couldn’t resist giving up that kernel of power, he supposed, but Laurent still wanted to hold up his end of the bargain.  Everything was just better as a surprise.  His lips curled, recalling how well Damen had reacted to his “surprises” in the past.

To have revealed his worry about Jokaste to him must’ve taken a lot, even in Laurent’s inebriated state.  Must’ve made it worse, actually.  Laurent winced, unable to banish the memories of his behavior.  Damen had the patience of a saint.

Damen worried about the ice cold, iron cast, female and slightly-less-bitchier version of himself, if he was recalling his own words correctly.  He had loved her, and he still cared for her, even after all she had done to him.  Laurent snorted, the pressure on his brain growing.

His husband was incredibly forgiving, and there wouldn’t be a day Laurent wasn’t grateful about Damen’s ability to accept.  But Damen couldn’t accept that Kastor had tried to hurt him, tried to kill him, and had almost succeeded.  He had shared one of his deepest worries with him, and Laurent had been pissed out of his mind.  Perhaps Damen wouldn’t have been able to do so otherwise, but it wasn’t right to force him to reveal a secret and then not carry out his end of the bargain with something of equal weight.

Just a few months as husbands, and Damen was already turning him into someone who couldn’t bear the idea of unrighteousness.

Laurent turned onto his stomach, faintly smiling at how Damen had made sure he had drank water before falling asleep and had tucked him in.  His husband was the entire reason he hadn’t drunk the full bottle, and most of his impulse control.

So there was no one to stop him when he started hatching a plan.

If he was going to tell Damen a secret,  _ his _ secret, he’d be damned if he didn’t do it right.  Even if it was unpleasant, even if he didn’t want to burden his husband.

But Damen hadn’t burdened him with telling him about Jokaste, about Kastor, Laurent reminded himself, and Damen would want to know.  It was time.  

So as they ate breakfast together, he quietly began plotting.

* * *

 

“What are we doing here?” Damen asked, his brows knitting together.

Laurent smiled, pressing his lips together.  “I’ve wanted to tell you something for a long, long time, and I figured that it was time.  As, you know, we made a bargain, and I’ve waited long enough,” he said, straightening his clothes.  Satisfaction bloomed within him at Damen’s slack jaw.

“A bargain, when did we make a- wait, you remember that night?” he asked, stricken.  Laurent winced, his eyes squeezed shut.

“I didn’t want to tell you because I needed to be ready to hold up my end, and now I am.  I wasn’t back then, and I didn’t know if you wanted to talk about it or not, so I figured it was better to just pretend I didn’t remember it,” he admitted quietly, eyes looking down.

“You could’ve just said that, Laurent.  I wasn’t going to force you to tell me anything, I just wanted to tell you, and then after that it just felt too awkward to bring it up again.  You didn’t have to go through all of this just to tell me a secret,” Damen said, eyes soft.  Laurent struggled, blood beginning to pound in his head.

“I have a thing for dramatics, if you haven’t noticed,” he smirked, kicking at the dirt.  “Please, sit down.  This might take a little while.”  Worry clouded Damen’s eyes, but he took Laurent’s hand in his own and sat.

“Take your time, but know that you don’t  _ have _ to do this,” he insisted, and Laurent smiled back weakly.

“Thank you,” he whispered, “but I have to do this for me.  Does that… does that make sense?”

“Yes.”  Laurent let out a breath, closing his eyes.

“Not long after the Regent first started seeing me, I started getting these  _ feelings _ .”  Damen stilled beside him, and he squeezed his husband’s hands, not daring to open his eyes.  “My brain started- started not working right.”  He squared his shoulders back, forcing himself to breathe.

“It wasn’t long after my family’s death, either, and I wasn’t- I wasn’t in a good place.  Their loss was bad enough, and then to have my uncle-”  He cut himself short, unable to finish the sentence.  “To say the least, what happened didn’t make grieving them any easier.”

The scent of the gardens surrounded him, and he allowed himself to be calmed by the combination of floral scents in the air.  Laurent had chosen the garden knowing that it would calm him when things got hard.  He just hadn’t thought he would be struggling right off the bat.

“And I’d get into these moods where nothing really worked right, if that makes sense.  I’d ache all over, and there’d just be numbness or crushing heartache.  Nothing I did alleviated it, and it wasn’t grief.  Well, it wasn’t just the grief, there was so much more to it than that.”  

“Take a deep breath, Laurent.  It’s okay, I’m right here,” Damen soothed, squeezing his hands back.  Laurent nodded, forcing his lungs to push air in and out of his body.

“Right.  Right, okay.  So one day, I was just walking, and my horrible, treacherous brain just goes, you know, this would be so much easier if you just killed yourself.”  Damen stilled.  “I tried- I tried so hard to just dismiss it, to just ignore it, but it wouldn’t be ignored.”  His lips felt like they were trembling, and tears started to cloud at his closed eyes.

“And those dark  _ episodes _ ,” he spat, “just got worse as time went on.  I’d think about how much easier it would be to just die and join the rest of my family, except I wouldn’t be with them because killing yourself is selfish and good people aren’t selfish.”  His voice was mocking, but surprisingly steady.

“Laurent-”

“Please let me finish, because if I stop now, I’ll never finish.”  He opened his eyes just in time to see Damen nodding.  “So that was my life- for a while, at least.  Obviously, I never went through with it.”  He scoffed, turning his head towards the rest of the gardens so Damen wouldn’t see the tears budding in his eyes.  “I used to  _ hate _ myself for being unable to do it, for being too  _ weak  _ to do it.”

“I tried jumping off the roof of the palace one time, but I knew that the jump wouldn’t kill me.  I just wanted to try it, to do something to get the ache in my chest to go away,” he whimpered.  “So I stood over the ledge, and I jumped.  I fell into a tree, and sprained my arm, but I was lucky.  That’s what everyone said.  That I was  _ lucky _ to be alive, and I didn’t feel it, because I knew that it wouldn’t have killed me.  I just needed to know what it would feel like.”

“By the time this happened, the Regent decided to dispose of me and get a new-new toy.  And I hated him, I hated him and you and I was just filled with so much hate, and I figured, well, I can’t kill myself before you two sons of bitches die, might as well make you pay for hurting my family- for hurting me.”  He took a deep breath, forcing himself to look into Damen’s eyes.

“The urge to kill myself somehow disappeared sometime after that.  How, or why, I don’t know.  But I’m grateful.  The episodes persisted, and still persist, and they’ve gotten a lot better, but they still hurt, and that’s why it’s hard to get out of bed some mornings, and why I’m so-”  Damen wrapped him up in a hug, his chest shaking.  “Damen?” he asked, voice small.

“I’m so sorry,” he rumbled, his heartbeat steadying Laurent’s breathing.  “I’m sorry that you had to go through that, alone, and that you felt you had no other options besides that.”  Tears silently poured down his face, and he clutched closer into his husband.

“I’m sorry for waiting so long to tell you, I just- I just didn’t know  _ how _ ,” he stressed, sobs silently overtaking his body.

“Don’t be sorry,” Damen shushed, gently rubbing his back.  “You don’t owe me anything.  I’m just happy that you find enough comfort in me to tell me this.”  He rested his head atop Laurent’s own, and he could feel his throat bobbing and moving as he talked.

“I’ve wanted to tell you for so long,” he whispered, holding tight to Damen.

“And now you have.  I won’t let you go through that alone ever again.  You don’t have to suffer on your own anymore.”  Laurent closed his eyes, steadying his breath.

He slowly pulled away from Damen, his teary eyes staring into Damen’s own tearful gold orbs.

“Thank you.”

Because he knew that Damen kept his word.  Because he knew that Damen loved him.  Because he knew that Damen would always love him.  Because he knew he had grown from a boy flinging himself at Death to a man desperately in love.  Because he had never been happier.

**Author's Note:**

> On a personal note, this fic took a lot out of me. It was hard to write, if only because it felt like I was pouring my soul out. As someone who struggles with depression and used to be suicidal, I know how hard it is to tell a loved one about it. The idea of Laurent having been suicidal isn't canon in any way, but having done research on childhood sex abuse and having personally lost family, it is plausible. I didn't write this lightly, and if this offends you in any way, that wasn't my intent. I write from personal experience as much as I do research. I hope you enjoyed this fic.


End file.
